


Seafoam Green

by MemeKon



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Post-Break Up, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MemeKon/pseuds/MemeKon
Summary: Caleb feels him before he sees him.(Or: a chance meeting, years after Caleb and Adam have broken up.)
Relationships: Adam Hayes & Caleb Michaels, Adam Hayes/Caleb Michaels
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Seafoam Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thelittlestbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlestbird/gifts).



> Hi, thelittlestbird! As I was reading through your letter my heart broke at the notion of Adam and Caleb breaking up, because I'm a romantic like that, and then I was just hit by this idea. It's not quite what you wanted, but I hope you still enjoy it!  
> Happy Holidays!

Caleb feels him before he sees him. 

It’s been a while since it’s happened, the whole ‘getting sucked into someone else’s feelings’ thing. He’s gotten—better, over the years. Better at tuning out of other people’s frequencies, and focusing on his own. It doesn’t work all the time, but it works enough that he’d been able to get through dorms and locker rooms, even after—after.

This isn’t like it used to be in high school, or those first few years of college, getting stuck in a whirlwind of color and infinite noise so overwhelming it consumed him until all he was was a mirror for everyone else’s emotions. And it definitely isn’t like it used to be with him, ocean blue, endless. 

It’s—lighter, softer. _Powder blue_ , Caleb thinks, remembering that one Saturday afternoon so many years ago, his own light blue, deep in the way nostalgia always feels, coming into the mix with the memory.

It’s different, and it’s not an assault—more like a tentative reaching hand—, and Caleb doesn’t need to turn around and look for him in the crowd to know that somewhere in there he’ll find Adam Hayes.

But he does, anyway. He turns around, first coming face to face with the guy behind him in line for coffee (and if he really was slipping, he’d feel the exhaustion crawling over him like a many limbed creature), mouths sorry at him, feeling warm with awkwardness even as he lets his eyes roam over the coffee shop until—

—Until he finds him, alone in a table next to the window, with a laptop and his wireless headphones on (the noise cancelling ones Caleb had saved up for that last Christmas because Adam had still been using the ones he’d gotten him that first birthday they’d spent together, even though they went on the fritz more often than not). 

The last of the dying sunlight is hitting him just so, cutting his silhouette, making him look like contemporary art, and Jesus, it’s been years, and Caleb is still—

“—Sir?” 

_Shit._

He turns around to find the barista behind the counter looking at him with a raised eyebrow, judgment so thick that Caleb doesn’t need his ability to feel it like his own, making his ears burn.

“Uh, yes, sorry. A hot chocolate. With whipped cream. Uh, please.”

The barista’s lips twitch, and Caleb tries not to fidget.

Because Caleb is a fucking 6-foot-something coward sometimes, he books it out of there as soon as he’s handed his environmentally friendly reusable cup. And then he spends the rest of the evening beating himself up over it, feeling like utter crap (all of it his fucking own); thinking about the way Adam’s leg had been bouncing under the table, about how focused he’d looked, how _good_.

 _God, get a fucking grip_ , he thinks, as he stares at the ceiling that night in bed. 

He dreams of Adam, that night. 

Of course he does.

He avoids the coffee shop for a couple of days, until he gets fed up with his own cowardice, with the way he’s feeling like he’s back in senior year of high school, shutting Adam out instead of trying to untangle the mess of his own emotions, and talking about them the way Dr. Bright always wanted him to do. 

When he does, he makes his way there like a man walking into a courthouse, expecting to be found guilty of all charges and then some, and feeling like a complete dumbass over it.

It’s not even that—it’s not even like he did anything to hurt Adam, in the end. Or like Adam did anything to hurt him. It’s not like there were huge blow-out fights, or anything like that. 

There were only awkward silences in late night phone calls, dark circles when they got to see each other every other weekend. The green of their combined emotions getting muddier and muddier with all the things they couldn’t say to each other, didn’t really know how to.

It didn’t peter out, because it never could’ve between them, but at some point at the start of sophomore year, on a weekend when Caleb had been able to make the way over to Yale from his own campus a couple of states away, they’d both lain in bed, Adam’s head on his chest, and Adam had whispered, “This isn’t working, is it?”

And Caleb’s heart had sunk, knowing that was the beginning of the end, and he’d held Adam tight, something small and childish in him thinking that it couldn’t end if he didn’t ever let go of him. If they just stayed like that.

He feels the powder blue seeping into the corners of his awareness as soon as he’s at the door. He tries not to poke at it, but there’s a calmness to it, the deep mystifying pool he’d felt sometimes, in the beginning, only clearer. Caleb could look at the surface and see all the way down to the bottom, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t do it, and he doesn’t let himself sink into Adam’s emotions, even though every part of him aches for it. He missed it, more than he’d realized, the way Adam’s feelings feel, the way they meet with his seamlessly, anchoring him.

He tamps it all down and makes his way in, instead, hears the cheerful little jingle of the bell on the door, and finds Adam almost instantly, on the same table. He can only see the back of his head from where he is, but he already knows the way he must look, eyes a little squinted as he focuses on whatever’s on the screen, behind his privacy screen filter. He’d always found it endearing, the way he’d get sucked into something so completely.

He goes through the motions of getting his hot chocolate, and once it’s in his hands, he just stands there with it, next to the counter, rooted to his spot, until someone else’s drink is on the counter and he has to make way for them.

 _You’re not a coward, Michaels_ , he tells himself, finally, and makes his way towards Adam.

“Is this seat taken?”

He regrets the words as soon as they’re out. Really, Michaels? Of all the things you could say to one of the smartest people you know after years of no contact at all, you go with the most awfully clichéd pick-up line to ever be uttered. Of course you do.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because Adam doesn’t look up until Caleb’s mug is on his field of vision. And when he does, Caleb can’t even really remember what he was getting so worked up about two seconds ago. 

“Caleb?” The powder blue ocean ripples—surprise, a pleasant one. A hint of melancholy, of aimless hurt. A side of nerves. It all mirrors the way he feels, as he sits down, jittery and sweaty.

Adam takes his headphones off, and Caleb can’t help but smile at the way the motion messes with Adam’s curls, and how Adam pushes them off his face not a second after, almost like a well-rehearsed choreography.

They both spend a couple of seconds just—looking at each other. 

Then they both speak at once:

“How—?”

“I—”

And then they both abruptly stop and say, “Sorry—”

And then they’re both laughing, blushing and awkward, and _God_ , has Caleb missed this. 

It’s not like he’s been pining away, stuck in time. It’s been—what, five years? Since they broke up. And Caleb has moved on, mostly. He graduated college, moved cities, got a job. He made friends, dated a couple of people. But underneath all, there’s—there’s always been an Adam-shaped hole in him. A quiet, empty place that should’ve had snark and thoughtfulness in it, Shakespeare and ABBA, texts with midnight musings that Caleb would read over and over in the morning.

“What is the great Caleb Michaels doing in New York?” 

“Well, I don’t know about great, but—I live here. I’ve lived here for the past, uh, year and a half, maybe?”

God, he hasn’t felt this gawky and dumb since his first job interview as a graduate, all stiff in his suit, sitting in front of a too cheerful HR person, getting hints here and there of her exhaustion and annoyance (not aimed at him, thankfully).

“Were we this awkward back in senior year?” Adam says, and it startles a huff of laughter out of him.

“We were worse,” Caleb says, and takes a sip of his hot chocolate. Adam smiles when he gets a whipped cream moustache, and Caleb is tempted for a second or two to leave it there, because it’s been too long since he’s seen an Adam smile, rare and beautiful, and infectious. “It took you months to stop thinking I was setting you up for some nefarious Carrie scenario. And I was—a walking disaster.”

Adam’s eyes grow softer at Caleb’s words, and his hands—fidgeting with his headphones—still.

“You still have them,” Caleb blurts out, nodding towards the headphones.

Adam looks down at them, gets a nostalgic smile, says, “They are good headphones.”

The ripples in the clear blue ocean smooth down, a little. 

Caleb smiles along and nods, says, “They are.”

They smile at each other, both awkward, both just a little weird, both unsure of how exactly to go about this, and Caleb could sit here forever, going in stops and starts, finding their groove through trial and error. 

“How did _you_ get here?” Caleb asks when he starts feeling more than a little ridiculous.

“I moved after graduation. I had a job offer here, from an indie publisher, and it—well, call me a hopeless romantic, but New York really seemed like the place to be, for a guy like me. Like the place where dreams really do come true.”

Caleb’s heart clenches, and he knows the feeling is all his.

“Did they?” He asks, feeling bold.

Adam doesn’t need him to clarify, like other people would. Just squints, hums, rubs his thumb over the band of his headphones, gazes out the window.

“I don’t think my dreams are the same as they were back then. But I like where I am.” He looks back at Caleb then, says. “I like who I am. For the first time in maybe—I don’t know, ever? And I’m not saying I’m—I’m not saying I’m not depressed anymore, that I’m a whole new Adam Hayes, free of issues, but I don’t—the world doesn’t feel like a gaping maw waiting to swallow me whole, you know? When I have trouble getting up in the mornings, I know it’s not gonna be forever.” 

It’s more honesty than Caleb had been expecting, and Caleb doesn’t know quite what to do with it, but there’s still—there’s so much relief at hearing that. He’d always wanted to be Adam’s superhero, he’d always wanted to take care of him, to be the person Adam could lean on, but Adam’s biggest enemy has always been this huge thing Caleb had no way to defeat, no way to intimidate into submission. 

He’d known, even back then, that it wasn’t his place to do that, that ultimately Adam was his own hero, but he’d been younger, and in love, and scared of the molasses-thick darkness in Adam, scared of waking up one day to find out it had drowned him.

He doesn’t know he’s going to say it until it’s past his lips, a soft, almost whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Adam frowns at him. Caleb looks down at his mug—already lukewarm in his hands—, licks his lips, says, “I—I kept pushing. I knew how hard it was for you to let me in and I knew you were trying, and I was just—so fixated on wanting you to feel better, to be what you needed, that I—I lost track of what you wanted. You didn’t need a superhero, you just needed me, and I didn’t know how to give you that.” 

Adam covers both of Caleb’s hands with his, then, and when Caleb looks up at him, he’s got a gentle, sad smile on his face. Like the one he’d worn that last morning when they’d said goodbye outside of his dorm, knowing it was going to be the last time. Caleb’s gut churns. Adam’s powder blue gets slightly darker, entangles with Caleb’s own feelings, makes a soft seafoam green.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” When Caleb’s about to say something, Adam adds, “It wasn’t mine either. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. We were both young and a little lost, dealing with all these things that were bigger than us, and really, it’s a miracle we made it as far as we did; that we didn’t hurt each other before calling it quits.”

 _We wouldn’t have hurt each other_ , Caleb wants to say, but knows better. Knows better than anyone else, perhaps, how deep people can love each other, and how it doesn’t stop them from hurting each other; how that only gives sharper tools, better aim.

“Geez, look at us, being mature and depressing.” Adam says then, squeezing his hands, smile losing its sad edge. “Next we’ll start talking about how far in student loan debt we are, and make it a party.”

Caleb throws his head back and groans, and Adam lets out a little puff of laughter.

After that, it’s like they’ve gone through whatever invisible hurdle was there, keeping them at arm's’ length, and Adam tells him all about his editing job at his indie publisher, equal parts gushing and despairing about his authors, about this stray cat he found in his apartment one morning and how it just never left, about this friend he has from Yale that visited a couple of weeks ago, who dragged him to a diner with singing staff, about helping this same friend find a community of Atypicals online, about the way she’d cried when she’d told him about her ability, and how Adam had cried with her. Caleb tells him about his own job (less glamorous, but still strangely fulfilling), about the old lady with a food truck by his apartment, who makes the best burritos he’s ever had, about getting them after his group sessions with other Atypicals.

“You should come with me, one day. Her churros could make a grown man cry,” he says, before his mind catches up with his mouth. When it does, he blushes up to the roots of his hair, and opens his mouth to take it back, to apologize for making things awkward just when they’ve made them less so, but Adam’s talking before he can get the words in order:

“Sure,” he says, and the blue ocean ripples again, forms small, antsy waves as Adam looks up at him through his eyelashes, and adds—aiming for playful and missing by about a mile, “It’s a date.”

The waves turn seafoam green as Caleb swallows, palms sweaty where they’re still holding on to his mug, and he feels them crash against the shore, again and again, euphoric and restless at once, both of them in this, awkward, and different but still the same, and says—throat dry—, “Sure. It’s a date.” 


End file.
